


Outside The Frame

by nilafhiosagam



Series: Backwards And To The Left [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Familial Relationships, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Humor, I hope, Marauders' Era, Swearing, summer 1975
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-02 06:17:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,232
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16299707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nilafhiosagam/pseuds/nilafhiosagam
Summary: Essentially The Oil Painting of Our Youth, if we hadn't concentrated on Harry and Regulus so much. You might want to read that one first.Scenes probably out of order, and hopefully going to provide insight into the minds of other characters.(And if there is sometimes a ridiculous amount of shameless fluff, then so be it.)





	Outside The Frame

**Author's Note:**

> Hello everyone! If you're reading this, then you've either come here from The Oil Painting of Our Youth, in which case, hi! Alternatively, you just stumbled across this and didn't feel like reading the other fic first, in which case, I commend you for your resoluteness but warn that you may find yourself feeling lost very quickly. 
> 
> Adding and changing tags as we go. Characters tagged as they appear. If you think something should be tagged or a rating should be changed, just let me know! Ships will be tagged, even if they're not together yet, but only after at least one of them has acknowledged having feelings. In other words, it might be a while, and it's only gen for now. 
> 
> Anyway, I hope that you enjoy this, and all chapters to come, sporadic though they may be.
> 
> 19/11/18- only minor grammatical edits, no point re-reading if you don't want to.
> 
> Alternate title for this chapter: Remus Is A Push-Over (And He Knows)
> 
> Alternate alternate title: The Swearwolf Thinks Too Much
> 
> Set during and just after chapter fifteen of Oil Painting, and finally giving the Marauders some screen time.

_Oh, go on Remus- it’ll be fine! You’re a great actor, remember? No one will suspect a thing!_

 

Remus indulged himself in an eye-roll and then, seeing as there was no one around to hear it, went a step further and let out an exasperated huff of breath.

 

Fucking _James._

 

Just because he was a werewolf didn’t mean that he was any good as a spy or sniffer hound, but would James listen?

 

No. No he would not, because James Potter- for all that he was a fantastic friend and a pretty decent person (most of the time)- was the most _annoying, stubborn, thick-headed arsehole_ in the country, with the possible exception of Sirius Black, depending on how long it had been since Sirius had last gotten one of his ‘Ideas’ into his head.

 

And speaking of Sirius, oh that little _shite._

 

_Oh, go on, Moony,_ Sirius had said, all bright and smiling, that dick.  _You’re not scared, are you?_

 

Cue even brighter grin and that weird little smug shoulder-settle thing that Sirius did when he was being incredibly annoying.

 

And Remus had tried to ignore all of this, had tried to dissuade stupid James Fucking Potter, had tried to ignore Sirius’ piss-poor attempts at needling him into action, had tried to ignore the cajoling look on Peter’s face.

 

No, he was _not_ scared, thanks Sirius, because there was hardly anything to be scared of, was there?

 

No, James, he was in fact rather terrible at acting when he was under pressure, as James bloody well knew, after the whole debacle with the Vanishing Solution and those balloons last year.

 

And no, Pete, he didn’t see, actually, what benefit this could be to anyone- creeping around someone else’s house to watch two people sleep was incredibly fucking sad and weird and the sort of thing that miserable outcasts of society did, and Remus fulfilled that role well enough as it was.

 

Besides, the whole smelling thing was pretty fucking _weird,_ James.

 

_No, but Remus- it’ll work this time. The full was just the other day, and_ you  _said that-_

 

Well he knew perfectly well what he had said, thank you James, but that meant fuck all in the grand scheme of things because he just wasn’t doing it, and that was that.

 

But regardless of what Remus had said, he had somehow, _somehow,_ wound up here, creeping down the corridor from James’ bedroom, towards the spare rooms and James’ favoured Floo entry point, to go and be incredibly fucking sad and weird, apparently.

 

He really wasn’t all that sure as to how that had happened, just that one moment he’d been trying to work out what exactly James had actually said underneath all of the unnecessary ‘therefore’ s and ‘and that means’ s and ‘so on and so forth’ s, and the next Peter had been offering him a vaguely commiserating smile from his place on the floor as Sirius actually _pushed_ him out the door in a mess of shoving and trying not to get shoved and stumbling and elbows and an overly-loud _Good on you, Moony- we have every faith in you._

 

And then Remus had been standing in the hallway, blinking, and Sirius had offered him the same big, obnoxiously aware of his own charm sort of grin that he liked to flash at McGonagall roughly .5 seconds before Gryffindor lost a good 20 points, which had then softened into a much less annoying crinkly-eyed, closed-mouth, thing and a quiet, _Good luck, soldier._

 

And Remus had been momentarily distracted by the sudden show of what just might have been genuineness and actually charming amounts of charm, and then Sirius’ face had brightened back up to hex me please-levels and he had said, _Take your time!,_ and then the door had closed because Sirius was an insufferable little wankstain and James was too fucking stubborn and Peter was no help whatsoever when the other two were within jinxing distance and Remus was such a fucking push-over sometimes.

 

Case in point: he was _actually_ doing it, instead of hammering on the door and insulting them until he was let back in.

 

And oh, God, _no_ , he could hear the quiet murmur of voices up ahead, which meant that he was either going to have to try and convince James’ parents that he was just taking the scenic route to the loo, or else it was time for Remus Lupin’s World-Renowned Acting Ability to come to the fore.

 

Because Remus was alright at pretending to be quietly saddened and somewhat disapproving when the teachers were looking around to see who was smirking to themselves after several students sprouted feathers (mostly because it was always _his_ idiot friends who were doing the smirking and not being subtle enough about it to manage to get by unnoticed) and he wasn’t bad at telling people all about his terrible and awful allergy to walnuts so he couldn’t _possibly_ have some of that slightly suspect-smelling walnut cake, and he was even good at pretending to not understand a joke and needing it to be explained to him very slowly and carefully, and _no,_ he was not smirking, how dare you, and isn’t it strange how much more room there is in here now that your ego’s deflated a bit, Sirius?

 

But Remus couldn’t really lie for shit when he was under pressure, which was why they had _all_ gotten into trouble over the Vanishing Solution last year, and probably why his friends had realised early on that he wasn’t visiting his parents or going to his Great-Aunt Charlotte-Jane’s wedding (that one had been one of the more panicked lies, and the excuse had come only from trying to remember whether or not he had said his mum was sick last month and then remembering the novels she had mentioned in her letter that morning) or struck down with the stomach bug once a month every month.

 

And yet here he was.

 

And in what felt like the worst bit of acting known to man-kind, Remus strolled past the open bedroom door, cast a half-curious glance inside, and then stopped dead in his tracks.

 

“What’re you two doing in here?,” he asked, and oh God this was going horribly already, James Potter was a dead fucking man. “I just left-oh. Oh. Not-not who I thought you were. Ah. Oops?”

 

_Christ, Lupin._

 

To be fair, it wasn’t actually his worst performance to date, though this was helped enormously by the fact that for a very brief moment he really had wondered if he was looking at James and Sirius.

 

Two dark-haired boys sat on the narrow single bed, both wearing what looked like James’ pyjamas, and staring at him, obviously in the middle of their own conversation.

 

(There was also an unfamiliar snowy owl asleep on the desk by the door. Remus eyed the open window for a second or two.)

 

For that very brief moment, all Remus could see were two of his best friends- James’ untidy hair, Sirius’ slightly haughty expression, James’ huge glasses, and Sirius’ long legs. Even the way they were leaning into each other, as if there was no one else in the world, was a James-and-Sirius-Sirius-and-James sort of thing to do.

 

And then the moment was over, because those weren’t James’ rectangular lenses, and Sirius’ hair hadn’t been that short and neat in years, and James’ hands were never still and not flailing around to prove his point, and Sirius wasn’t really all that thin and lanky-looking anymore.

 

The silence stretched on for a moment, before Remus frowned slightly and said, “Regulus, isn’t it? You’re Slytherin’s Seeker.”

 

And Sirius’ little brother (who none of them had ever spoken to, and who looked all of thirteen to Sirius’ nearly sixteen and almost passing as eighteen) nodded, briefly drawing his shoulders together like Sirius did when he was nervous and letting the traces of his smile fade from his face.

 

“You’re Lupin, aren’t you? I can’t quite recall your first name. Sorry.”

 

Regulus Black looked and sounded like a more polished version of Sirius when he said this, lacking the careless shrug and vaguely apologetic look that Sirius would have sported and replacing it with manners and something that was almost genuine but a bit too distant to make it.

 

Remus waved it off. “It’s alright,” he said, because it _was_ alright, because Sirius had never made any effort to introduce his friends to his family or vice versa (thank God), and up until today, Regulus Black had only ever been a green blur, a melancholic-looking First Year, and both a supporting character in Sirius’ favourite tales of his childhood and the target of several vicious, disjointed, insults in the quiet of their dormitory on a grey Saturday afternoon.

 

“Remus, incidentally. My name is Remus.”

 

 _Good God,_ he was probably coming off as a right twit.

 

Regulus Black nodded. Remus decided that there was something about his face- the shape of his mouth, maybe?- which was distinctly unlike Sirius, and he wondered if Regulus Black had the same tiny mole on his neck, or the almost-but-not-quite-perfect front teeth, or if he always looked as if he was holding back a sneer.

 

And then Remus’ attention slid to the other occupant of the room, under the covers of the bed.

 

He frowned slightly again.

 

“I’m sorry, but I’m afraid that I don’t know your name,” he said to the boy who looked scarily like James, aiming for politely interested and slightly abashed and probably looking a bit unwell instead.

 

The boy who looked scarily like James (and also like he was watching a nasty Quidditch accident with no small amount of disbelief) blinked. It was hard to tell from so far away and from behind the big round lenses, but Remus thought his eyes might have been lighter than James’.

 

“Oh, uh, Harry. I’m Harry.”

 

Remus smiled. “Nice to meet you.”

 

Harry smiled weakly, and started twisting the bedsheets in his hands.

 

“You too,” he said, staring at Remus rather intensely and ignoring the odd look Regulus Black was giving him.

 

The boy might have looked (and sounded, to a certain extent) terrifyingly like an ever-so-slightly younger James (though to be fair, James didn’t quite look fifteen either), but Harry possibly-Potter certainly didn’t act like him, and for that Remus was glad because the world certainly didn’t need another James Potter running around and being stubborn and annoying and stupidly likeable and ‘accidentally’ blowing things up.

 

There was also something about Harry possibly-Potter’s face which was very unlike James, though Remus couldn’t really put his finger on it.

 

There was another beat of silence, before Remus remembered his ‘mission’.

 

Feeling very, very, stupid and sad and outcast of society-like and all those good things, Remus inhaled as deeply and subtly as he could.

 

The faint breeze coming through the window was a help, for all that it also carried in the smell of grass and rose bushes.

 

Remus smelled grass and rose bushes and owl and dust and that nice thing that all of the bed linen in the Potters’ house was washed with and some of the scone he’d eaten earlier and the vaguely gunpowder and outside and biscuits smell of James’ room, and then he finally got a noseful of the other two people in the room. (That never sounded any better, no matter how many times he thought it.)

 

Nice bed linen, hospital, dust, cold, from both of them, and then more personal things underneath.

 

Almost Sirius-smell, but also paper and ink and something lemony and just _different_ though not unpleasant.

 

And then, a hint of James- and definitely James, not just someone like him- and something else that was familiar in general but not right now, and then grass and something sweet and warmth in general and pebbles of all things and something very unfamiliar.

 

And that was quite enough werewolf business for one day, thank you very much, because the full moon was over, and that meant that Remus could go back to pretending that he was just like everyone else for a month.

 

Remus smiled again, and stepped back. “I’ll just be off, then- nice meeting you! Bye!”

 

And then Remus Lupin sped off out of the room and down one flight of stairs, feeling both disgusted with himself (and his friends) and ashamed of his own appalling acting because he had probably come off as some clumsy, staring, far too polite clod, and _fucking hell, Lupin._

 

Remus cut through the dining room, clambered through the portrait hole which should have led outside but put him in the downstairs sitting room, went into the adjoined conservatory, opened another door which should have led outside (the Potters were rather fond of those) and then climbed the narrow set of stairs to come and find himself standing just outside James’ room again.

 

(This was James’ preferred method of getting to his room, and the reason why Remus, at least, always chose to Floo in upstairs, rather than have to make the whole trek from the downstairs sitting room.)

 

(Fucking James and his fucking complicated house.)

 

Remus opened the door, instantly stopping all talk of Mandrake leaves.

 

“Ah, Remus,” said James, grinning at him from where he was sprawled across his bed. “How’d it go?”

 

Remus closed the door and said without preamble, “James, you’re a stubborn knob, and I rather want to push you out the window some times.”

 

“Only some times?”, asked Peter, which prompted James to flick a convenient wad of parchment at his head.

 

Peter winced and probably wouldn’t say anything remotely disparaging about James within James’ reach for another ten minutes or so.

 

Sirius stopped pretending to be cool and above all of it from his position on the window seat, and instead looked at Remus and asked, “How was it?”

 

Remus sighed heavily and dropped down into the chair by James’ cluttered desk.

 

“Well,” he began, “they were both awake and in the one room for a start, so thanks for that James. And they probably think that I’m a complete idiot- which isn’t all that inaccurate a statement, but still. Didn’t I _tell_ you that I would be awful? And yet none of you ever listen. Well, I walked in anyway, and...”

 

 

 

 

“So- _is_ he your cousin?”

 

James shrugged, absent-mindedly tossing another ball of parchment from one hand to the other.

 

“Haven’t a clue- think Dad wants him to be, and Mum thinks he might be. I haven’t even spoken to him yet.”

 

James frowned suddenly, and crushed the ball tight in one hand.

 

“Where’s he come from?”, he asked no one in particular, fixing the wall with a rather piercing look. “What was he doing that he wound up in the middle of nowhere? Why hasn’t he been reported missing? Seems a bit odd, is all.”

 

The wall didn’t seem to give any satisfactory answers and James looked away after a moment, before catching Remus’ eye.

 

“You’re absolutely sure-”

 

“ _Yes,”_ Remus sighed. “Weren’t you the one singing my praises earlier? I’m sure.”

 

“But how do you know?”

 

“Well I have a nose, you see, and at times it works very well. Likely to make up for all the other times when it hardly works at all,” said Remus.

 

James didn’t look all that convinced.

 

Remus sighed. “I can just tell, alright? Like how books and flowers smell different but some Potions ingredients smell nearly the same. It’s like that.”

 

“So I’m crushed beetle eyes to you?”

 

“Obviously.”

 

Remus managed to keep a straight face for a moment or two, before he made the mistake of catching Sirius’ eye.

 

Sirius grinned, a little flash of teeth and brightening of eyes.

 

Remus grinned back.

 

“What _are_ you going to do though, James?”, asked Peter.

 

Remus snapped back to James, who sighed heavily.

 

“Well, Pete, I’m going to do what all great leaders do in times of crisis,” he said, decisively. “I’m going to ignore the problem until it goes away.”

 

“That sounds like it’ll work,” muttered Sirius.

 

Remus stared at James. “You are aware that this is a person we’re talking about, right? A person who’s going to be living here for the rest of the summer, you said, and probably going to school with us in September? When exactly is he going to go away?”

 

James raised his head slightly but didn’t look anyone in the eye.

 

“It’ll work out eventually,” he said, with the utmost confidence. To be fair though, James said most things that way, so this didn’t really mean all that much. “And until then, I’m going to stick to my guns and ignore everything. Now, I was thinking that when we go back, we could set off some fireworks to start, really liven up the Sorting.”

 

“McGonagall said that she’d castrate you if you did it again, after that time Mulciber sat on one,” said Peter.

 

James froze for a moment, eyes wide with remembered horror and a touch of amusement.

 

Remus caught Sirius’ eye again, and tried his best to convey, _what are we going to do?,_ using only his face and without looking like too much of a dolt. He probably wasn’t all that successful.

 

Sirius shrugged and very carefully mouthed, _I’ll try and talk about it later._

 

Remus nodded and didn’t bother trying to say anything back because Sirius Black was great at a lot of things, but was absolutely _shite_ at reading lips. It was oddly gratifying.

 

“We won’t put them on benches then,” said James finally, shrugging. “And you can set them off this time, just to be safe.”

 

As one might expect, Peter looked rather terrified by this idea. “But she _hates_ me! We all know she wouldn’t really do that to you- you’re her favourite!”

 

“Nonsense, Peter,” said James briskly. “Minnie McGonagall would never stoop so low so as to play favourites. And I think she likes you more than she lets on- you just need to _believe_ in yourself more.”

 

Peter looked thoughtful and somewhat disbelieving but didn’t bother trying to argue the point.

 

“What if we did something with the Lake?”, offered Sirius then. “Give them something to talk about on the way in. We’d be doing them a favour actually- trauma and incredulity are great for bonding.”

 

James smiled and pushed his glasses up his nose. “I think,” he said slowly, “that you might have had an idea there, Padfoot.”

 

Remus found himself grinning just a little bit. “Do the fireworks over the Lake, and something else in the Hall,” he said. “More space that way.”

 

“Nice one, Moony. _And_ we can finally use the suits of armour!”

 

“What? No! We agreed last year that enchanting the armour was more trouble than it was worth, and that we’d have to start at _least_ an hour beforehand.”

 

“Then you’d want to brush up on your animation spells, wouldn’t you, Prongs?”

 

“Peter, tell him he’s wrong.”

 

“Don’t listen to him, Wormtail- he’s using you for his own gain.”

 

“What do _you_ think, Remus?”

 

“That I want no part in your whatever-this-is, you hysterical children.”

 

“I’m the oldest one here!”

 

“That’s nice, Sirius. Pass the Chocolate Frogs, would you, Peter? Thanks.”

 

And thus were the topics of Harry and Regulus (but mostly Harry, to be honest) forgotten until much later.

 

And it was nice.

 

 

 


End file.
